NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Jim Rogers spent 25 years as the chief executive of electric and natural gas utilities in the U.S., the last seven as head of Duke Energy, the biggest electric power company in the country.

Now, in his retirement from the energy business, Rogers has taken on a new mission: Bringing electricity to the 1.2 billion people in the world who live without it.

In a new book, Lighting the World, Rogers calls for new steps by governments, financial institutions and entrepreneurs to bring light to remote areas in Africa and other regions where flickering candles and dangerous kerosene lamps are often the only options at night.

The book, which publisher St. Martin's Press plans to release Tuesday, lays out a vision that eschews the traditional approach to spreading electricity of constructing large coal, gas and nuclear power plants, and promotes instead a reliance on local production, small-scale connections and alternative forms of energy, such as solar panels, whose costs are coming down.